Art Out-of-Doors 
. . . The mind of man comprehends her 
effort and, though the skill of man cannot 
compete with her in the production of par- 
ticulars, man is able by art to anticipate her 
desires, and to exhibit an image of what she 
was intending.” But the landscape-garden- 
er is Nature’s rival, does create things like 
her own, can compete with her in perfect 
workmanship, for she herself works with 
him while he is re-uniting her scattered ex- 
cellences and obliterating her defects. What 
he cannot do she does for him, from the 
building of mountains and the spreading of 
skies to the perfecting of those “ particu- 
lars ’ ’ which turn the keenest chisel and 
blunt the subtilest brush — to the curling of 
a fern-frond and the veining of a rose. Of 
course she will not everywhere do every- 
thing. If part of her work is in completing 
man’s, part is in preparing for it, and he 
must respect the canvas and frame which she 
furnishes for his picture, the general scheme 
which she prescribes. He cannot ask her 
to build him mountains in a plain, to change 
a hill-side rivulet to a river, or to make trop- 
ical trees grow under northern skies. But 
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